1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to an aircraft and in particular to a monitoring system for an aircraft. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to an indicating system for security of compartments and spaces in an aircraft.
2. Background
Airline procedures may be important to ensure the safety for passengers using air travel. Currently, inspections of the interior of an aircraft may be made to prevent placement of or identify prohibited objects and/or items in an aircraft. The current inspections may be performed to ensure the finding of and/or disposing of these types of objects. Aircraft regularly undergo vigorous inspections each day and while cleaning the aircraft between flights resulting in several man-hours per airplane per day. If any areas appear to be tampered with, a more thorough inspection will then be performed.
These visual inspections may also be performed to ensure that the required minimum equipment is present before flight, for example, that life vests are present in all passenger seats. Any missing equipment may be required to be replaced before flight.
These and other types of inspections may be time consuming and may increase the amount of time needed between flights. These types of inspections may reduce the number of flights possible, as well as requiring increased personnel to perform inspections.
Attempts have been made to make inspections easier to perform. For example, life vests have been put in boxes or compartments with doors. These doors may then be sealed with a tamper evident device. As a result, a visual inspection may be quickly made to determine whether the tamper evident device is intact.
Visually inspecting the spaces, including seat cushions, is labor intensive. This type of inspection increases expense and time to operate flights. Most spaces in an aircraft may not be accessed or tampered with the majority of the time. Seat cushions were not originally designed for these kinds of regular removal and re-installation type inspections. As such, seat cushion components may not withstand this daily activity and may therefore, require more maintenance and replacement, causing significant additional cost to airlines.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus to overcome the problems described above.